Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself becoming a bit of a Zoe Highlight Video compulsive. Every time I take a photo with my HTC One I make sure that I have Zoe selected and that I take more than one of them so that I can create a highlight video like the one below.
Having a young family is where these video’s come in very handy, I recall my wife saying to me “It captures not just the photo’s but also the emotions at the time they were taken”, which I guess is actually true. It still amazes me is that this is all done via the phone, I don’t need to edit (apart from the event name) on a computer and I can select the photo’s I want from the one’s taken at / in the event.
Of course, HTC Zoe does a lot more than just give you the ability to produce these amazing videos, however that’s for another post. With this post want to focus on the video highlight part of Zoe and have a bit of a rant about some things I feel it’s missing, the downsides and parts which I feel are broken (I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on these points too).
- Music
Whilst the HTC One has some amazing templates it really bugs me that I can’t use my own music in a share. There is a slide show feature of the HTC Gallery App which offers the ability to choose your own music along with some other neat stuff however sadly, HTC have decided that these cannot be shared the same way that the Highlights can be.
- Branding
OK I get the fact that it’s a necessary evil, the fact that HTC put so much time and effort into creating this feature is something they are proud of and want their name to be associated with however I would like the ability to turn the branding shown at the end of the video’s OFF. I would even be willing to pay to have this ability so if your listening HTC, take note and earn yourself some pennies.
- Focusing
If there’s one thing HTC One users complain a lot about its focusing. If you look at the video below you will see just how hard it is for the HTC One to auto focus in a video. Admittedly the lighting where the video was taken was pretty poor however for my eyes, it was fine. The one thing that I’ve found helps the auto focus is a bit of manual intervention which involves long pressing the area you want to focus on and not just tapping it. You may find that it takes a bit of time however in the end it usually comes up pretty well.
- Zooming
If I can Zoom on a video then why on earth can’t I Zoom when using Zoe? It seems like a silly mishap that I hope HTC Fix in their next incarnation of software.
- Length
Now before you dirty minded folks get any ideas I want to say that size does indeed matter. I want the ability to select more than the pre-defined 13 (if I remember correctly) photos / videos / Zoe’s. This again ties back to the music pitfall where you could make the highlight video last as long as a chosen track which leads me very nicely onto my next area…
- Templates
Now I know that the leaked ROM brings more of these however I think HTC are missing a huge trick here and should consider creating something that would allow people to buy templates via a ZOE store at least give people the ability to download additional ones. I know that one of the problems with the music / length thing would be that the templates are set to last for a set period of time however giving people more of these and longer intervals allows for so much more fun to be had.
So there we have it, my list of complaints about the HTC One’s Zoe feature and as mentioned above, I would love to hear your thoughts on them all too.
